Let’s Start at the Beginning

My Version of Her Story - by Bud the Bird

Old picture of Meg, apparently 'toiling'

Meg was recently asked how she got started on these art pieces she likes to call #quirkies – I put the hashtag there because you can go to Instagram and look it up, believe me… she likes to call them #quirkies. She fumbled and rambled and reminisced until the story finally came out and it was actually kind of interesting. I’ll weed out her rambling and give you my version of what she said.

Long Long ago while living a lonely life in Northern Idaho, Meg toiled under the pressure of creating new and interesting art quilts. She… (Bud.. dial the drama back a notch, I wasn’t lonely.)

Fine. She was making art quilts and really loved making the characters, probably because one day she knew she would create me and I would enrich her life so immensely. I would.. (Bud… I thought this was about ALL of my art).

Right, anyway… she worked out the story of the quilt with the characters and a few little things to go with them, then she would start thinking about the background. She would say ‘Boooring’ it felt like the background was just filler and took away from the action. Instead she would leave them empty, usually a solid color and would fill them up with stitching and possibly embellishments like beads or whatever – I agree, booring! I’m bored. Can I get to the part about me now?

How does she twist her face up like that?

'Bird Watching' a little quilt I actually love even with the 'boring' background.

This is the prototype of 'Jack' he is about 2 feet top to bottom (or bottom to top in his case)

Ok, back to the dark ages. The fun part of the true story includes a wire bicycle decoration on her wall and her thinking it would be fun to add a character riding it or better yet, doing a one handed handstand on the seat of it! – I totally want to do that! She drew a boy doing a cartwheel and created him out of layers of paper, cut him out and everything. But he warped and peeled and just didn’t do what she imagined. Then she got the brilliant idea -I can say that, I’m not the artist here- to make him out of fabric with a stiff backing. She created ‘Jack’ stitched him up and fell in love with the idea of building these characters without backgrounds.

She hasn’t looked back since. (actually I have once or twice but I still seem to stay with the idea of making the story without the scenery). No interrupting Meg, this is my telling of the story. So anyway, back to what I was saying… She has made pieces as big as a wall and as small as, well, me. The super fun thing about the small ones, even the big ones, is that they can hang in unusual spaces, they can cross corners and come off the wall, they can hide in little nooks and crannies around the house. Visitors to our house love to find the little surprises hidden around.

There it is, the ancient history (Bud, can I cut in and say I’ve been making these #quirkies for about 5 or 6 years now?) Meg… this is MY story of your story, so no.

Thanks for reading everyone. I hope Meg wasn’t too annoying with her butting in. I should have done this when she wasn’t around. Enjoy the rest of your day and I’ll see you here next week!